Knowledge management strategy and its link to knowledge creation process

Knowledge has become to be considered as valuable strategic assets that can provide proprietary competitive advantages. It is more important for companies to distinguish themselves through knowledge management strategies. Without a constant creation of knowledge, a business is condemned to poor performance. However, it is still unclear how these strategies affect knowledge creation. Knowledge management strategies can be categorized as being either human or system oriented. This paper proposes a model to illustrate the link between the strategies and its creating process. The model is derived on the basis of samples from 58 Korean firms. The model depicts how companies should align the strategies with four knowledge creation modes such as socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization. It is found that human strategy is more likely to be effective for socialization while system strategy is more likely to be effective for combination. Furthermore, the survey result suggests that managers should adjust knowledge management strategies in view of the characteristics of their departments. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.